Datapoints

WHAT ARE DATAPOINTS?

Throughout the site various facts, figures and pieces of text are referenced
to the episode which they are from. The Datapoints system scans each part of
the the site and compiles a list of every reference used, then lists them all
under the appropriate heading. So for example, the weapons section has a page
for Phasers which mentions that they can heat rock to 8,000 degrees, as described
by Kirk in the TOS episode "The Enemy Within". So when you go to the
episode guides and look up that episode, the weapons Datapoint will list phasers
against it. The same phaser entry goes on to state that phasers can be set for
disruption effect as well, as described in the episode "Obsession",
so the Phaser page is listed in that episode as well.

HOW COMPLETE ARE DATAPOINTS?

It is important to realise that the Datapoints are not created directly by
us as such, but are a purely automated by-product of the referencing system
used within the database. Because of this the Datapoints are not a definitive
list of every appearence of a particular item. For instance, the weapons Datapoint
will not list every single episode in which phasers are used or discussed -
it merely lists those episodes which are referenced in the phaser page. Of course
ideally any given page will list every episode with states a significant fact
concerning that subject, but while we like to think that we cover issues to
a pretty good depth, we can't promise perfection!

The system can throw up Datapoints which look somewhat odd at first glance. For
instance, the Architecture Datapoints for the episode "The Cage" list Flint's Palace from
the episode "Requiem for Methuselah", even though it never appears in "The Cage".
The reason for oddities like this is that the painting used for Flint's Palace was a re-use of the Rigellian
Castle seen in "The Cage", and the caption on the Architecture page for Flint's Palace mentions
this similarity. Since both episodes are referenced in that entry, it appears on both episodes.

We have compromised on the completeness of the Datapoint listings in a couple
of cases. For instance, there is a section of the Datapoints which links to
people pages. The idea was that the Datapoints would list a person's name
against any episode where significant facts were disclosed for him or her (or
it). However, the episode guides have cast lists for each episode and these
already provide links to the character biographies, so there was a high degree
of repetition involved here. To avoid this, the Datapoints for a given episode
will only list a character if their bio includes a fact about them which is
referenced to the episode and the cast list for that episode does not
already list them. The idea of this is that if, for instance, a character mentions
that "Ensign Smith likes chocolate" in a given episode, and Ensign
Smith does not actually appear in that episode, then you will still find a link
to him there even though he is not in the cast list.

Some sections of the site are not included in the Datapoints because they do
not use the reference system. This includes much of the Stylings section, the
Articles section, and lesser items such as the What's New and Links sections.
Future upgrades to the database will likely bring some of these to the database.

WHERE DO DATAPOINTS TAKE ME?

Much of the DITL is comprised of "full entries", sections of the site where a person or object
is deemed important enough to have an entire page or group of pages devoted to them. In these cases, clicking
on the Datapoint will take you to those pages in just the same way that the normal menu buttons will. Then
there are sections of the site which cover less important or interesting items; these will generally group
many entries together on a single page - the Architecture section is a good example, displaying tens of
different cities or buildings on each of the pages. In order to save your download time and bandwidth,
clicking on a Datapoint for one of these items will take you to a page which will display only that individual
item rather than the entire set.

Some sections of the site repeat information contained elsewhere in an abridged
version. So for instance the Lists section has a rather extensive list of science
and technology items, including Cloaking Devices and Tricorders. Yet both Tricorders
and Cloaking Devices have full entries in the orange Sci-Tech section. The same
Lists section also has a (hopefully) complete list of all Star Trek species,
even though many of these species also recieve full or smaller entries in the
dedicated Species section. In cases like this the Datapoints will default to
the larger entry since it gives a much more complete description of the item,
usually with images. You may on occasion see two different links to the same
item - this simply means that there is a reference in each page which is not
used on the other one, so both are listed to give you as much information as
possible.

WHY ARE DATAPOINTS COLOURED?

All links are colour coded according to the site policy, with orange links taking you to a page written
from a 24th century point of view and blue links taking you to a page written from a present day point of view.